Take a tour of the world’s greatest instruments, bringing the universe closer than ever before

Written by Rob Lea

Three of the four telescopes that comprise the VLT at Paranal Observatory in Northern Chile

While space-based telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope often dominate W the headlines, humanity’s understanding of the Solar System, our galaxy and the wider universe have been massively influenced by telescopes that are firmly rooted on terra firma. Often, these telescopes are located at the summits of mountains, high above Earth’s weather systems, thus limiting the impact of our planet’s atmosphere on observations of the universe. Sometimes they are located in remote regions where the electromagnetic buzz of our species doesn’t obscure radiation from celestial sources. Indeed, some of these instruments would confuse and challenge even the person who first patented the telescope in 1608, Hans Lippershey, not just with their immense scale but also with their outlandish appearance. All About Space celebrates the somewhat unsung super telescopes, telescope arrays and observatories on Earth that have revolutionised our view of space.

The Very Large Telescope snapped a fiery-looking Jupiter in 2016

© ESO

VERY LARGE TELESCOPE

First light: 1998

Location: Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert, Chile Type: Visible light Diameter: Four Unit Telescopes with 8.2-metre (26.9-foot) diameter main mirrors and four movable 1.8-metre (5.9-foot) diameter auxiliary telescopes

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is billed as the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy. The four main telescopes of the VLT are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun, and they come together as a giant interferometer. The four telescopes can also be operated independently. One of the four telescopes of the VLT is capable of seeing faint astronomical objects with a visual magnitude of +30.0 in just an hour of viewing time. To put that into perspective, the faintest objects that can be seen with the naked eye are 4 billion times brighter than this. This means the VLT gives astronomers a precise and deep view of the cosmos.